The only advantage of the larger-capacity Fuze is…larger capacity. It’s up to you where you want to store the music and how much you are going to stuff onto it.
I don’t know what the user manual says about extra steps, but in my experience there are none. You can drag-and-drop onto the card or onto the unit exactly the same way.
Since you are going to be loading the content for your wife, you might prefer to keep everything on the removable MicroSD, load it on your computer and just hand it over. But it’s up to you.
The refresh takes place only if you have changed the content on the card or the unit.
A slow card should be fine. You need a faster one for your camera because you are writing lots of information quickly, but reading, which is what the Fuze does, isn’t so critical.
People have reported problems playing back video, just video, on Kingston cards. There was a recent post a while back from an unhappy Transcend user followed by a happy one, so it seems to be luck of the draw, or user error. Video playback is the trickiest thing the Fuze does, and it doesn’t always do it well. Music is a lot more reliable.
Put your MicroSD brand into the search box and see what you get.
Meanwhile…have you ever had an mp3 player? (Or a music-equipped cell phone, etc.) There’s always a learning curve, but the Sansa one is mercifully short. Y
You should be aware that the Fuze has two USB modes for how music is loaded: MSC and MTP. The idea was to provide maximum flexibility for users. The reality is that it can sometimes provide more confusion.
MSC works like any other drive on your computer–drag-and-drop. Two drives show up in My Computer: the unit and the card. (There are third-party programs that can make playlists, etc., for MSC mode.)
MTP works with Windows Media Player and is necessary for DRM (digital rights misery) information.
To me, Windows Media Player is an unnecessary middleman, but the idea was that it provides a more automated interface, equivalent to iTunes for iPod, and some people do like it. I don’t use MTP, and it may have some strictures with the MicroSD card–thanks to copyright owners who want to prevent you from copying files as simply as passing around a MicroSD card.
When you get the Fuze, it will be on Auto Detect, which will go to MTP mode if your computer has Windows Media Player 10 or 11 installed, MSC if not. I would immediately (1) download the latest firmware, from the sticky notes at the top of the forum and then (2) switch Settings/System Settings/USB Mode to MSC.
(Every time you update firmware, possibly once or twice a year, it goes back to Auto Detect, so that’s why I suggest upgrading before changing the setting. The current firmware is very reliable, and you could probably use it for a lifetime, though new features may come along in the updates. Don’t install Sansa Updater, which keeps calling home each time you connect. The updates just aren’t that frequent.)
It’s best to stick to one mode because your computer can only see one at a time–either the content you sent via MSC or the content sent by MTP. (The Fuze itself sees all the content.) So leave it in MSC, which is transparent and logical. In MSC, load content by drag-and-drop and you’ll always see exactly what’s going on.
The next step, as it will be with any mp3 player, is tagging–how the Fuze indexes your files. If you’ve been using another mp3 player that’s not an iPod, you should already be fine on that front. And if not, the forum is here.
Message Edited by Black-Rectangle on 10-01-2009 02:00 PM